Chicago group cited for Iraq aid won't pay fine

Coordinator balks at $20,000 penalty sought by the U.S.

A Chicago-based humanitarian group fined $20,000 by the U.S. Treasury Department for violating sanctions in Iraq four years ago said they will not meet Thursday's deadline for payment.

Danny Muller, a coordinator for the group Voices in the Wilderness, said the U.S. government is coming down on humanitarian groups in the current political climate to stifle reports about the Iraqi society and to promote U.S. objectives to go to war.

"It is not an act of coincidence and slow bureaucracy that they are contacting us four years after the violations occurred," Muller said, adding that the group will continue sending delegations that deliver medicine and other goods to Iraq.

A letter from the Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Treasury Department to the group's co-founder, Kathy Kelly, alleges they violated sanctions six times from 1996 to 1998, when they delivered supplies to Iraq without a permit. The letter explains four of the violations were dropped under the statute of limitations, reducing the $120,000 fine to $20,000.

Since receiving the initial penalty notice in December 1998, Muller said the group had not heard from the Treasury Department until a letter postmarked Nov. 6 arrived and demanded payment within 30 days of the postmark.

Muller said that since Voices in the Wilderness was founded in 1996, they have never obtained a government permit to travel to Iraq because of the delay it would cause in delivering medical supplies.

"If a kid in Chicago needs an ambulance, am I going to wait for the government to give the OK to call for an ambulance?" he said. "Those kids need help now."